


Masters of Their Fates

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [5]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Brutal Murder, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Regret, Reincarnation, Richard and Khan were very bad men, Shakespearean style language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 03:41:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2453390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Sherlock recovers from his fall from St Bart's, John rages at those who tried to kill him. When they sleep, the Richard and Khan they once were rage too. These two men, steeped in blood and brutality, confess their sins and their violent ends - could they spiral again down the paths that destroyed them in those first lives, if they so choose? Will they lose each other to such madness again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masters of Their Fates

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Julius Caesar:  
>  _Men at some time are masters of their fates:  
>  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,  
> But in ourselves, that we are underlings._
> 
> This series was only ever meant to be one story, just ONE story, and here I am. As always, in dedication to Atlinmerrick, whose fault this is. <3 you, honey.

"Stop pacing,” said Sherlock, a weary demand.

John, however, did not stop pacing.

"John."

John paused, raised his head to look at Sherlock, propped up on pillows in their bed, another pillow under his leg, which was still in plaster. He stared at the bruising on Sherlock's face, at the bald patch on the side of his head where they'd shaved him so they could relieve the swelling after hitting his skull on the ground: after falling _all that way_.

Sebastian Moran, trying to carry out Moriarty's labyrinthine plan in his ham-fisted away, had grown impatient. Instead of Sherlock stepping off the roof of St Bart's in exactly the right way to land on the inflatable platform that had been hastily dragged to its marks, Moran had _pushed_.

Sherlock had twisted in the air, trying to correct the warped trajectory.

John had watched, as instructed, from the street, a cry trapped in his lungs with his breath, held there by the panicked beating of his heart.

Sherlock landed mostly on the airbag, but not mostly enough. With more momentum than was safe, Sherlock had hit the edge and recoiled – flung to the concrete.

John didn't remember closing the intervening distance. One moment he was watching his recurring nightmare become terrifying reality, the next he was at Sherlock's side, administering CPR for those awful few moments before Sherlock began to breathe again, having had the wind knocked out of him. Then John was checking his pulse, examining his skull where blood poured from his cut scalp and coated his face, seeing the ugly angle of his leg, hardly daring to believe that somehow Sherlock had survived.

"John, it was not a _prophetic_ dream. There is no such thing."

"I dreamed it," said John through gritted teeth, "And here you are."

"You are supposed to be a doctor," sneered Sherlock, "a man of _science_."

"I know it's ludicrous," John bit back, "I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in psychics or crystals or what the fuck all else, but I dreamed you fell and then I _watched you do it_."

John stopped to take a ragged breath. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, so he missed the change in Sherlock’s expression.

"I know," said Sherlock softly, and full of regret, "I’m so sorry, John."

John lowered his hands and regarded Sherlock bleakly. "I should have killed Moriarty when I had the chance."

"That would not have stopped Moran."

John scowled. He might well have tried to kill Moran too, if he'd intercepted the little fuck trying to escape from the hospital instead of staying to give Sherlock first aid until more help arrived. Mycroft had the bastard now. He had _both_ those bastards, and he had better keep them locked up _tight_.

"John. Come to bed."

"I can't sleep."

"Then don't sleep. Sit with me."

“You need to rest.”

“I’ll rest when you’re here with me. I…” Sherlock hesitated, unused to asking. Unused to wanting. “I want…” He made his voice light and his expression cross, as though he was a bratty child demanding attention. “To be held.”

John saw right through the eggshell thin façade and was instantly at Sherlock’s side. He brushed Sherlock's cheek with his thumb. “Of course. Of course I will.” He bent to kiss Sherlock’s brow tenderly, then his lips, comforting sweet, “Whatever you want. Whatever you need.”

Sherlock, eyes closed, exhaled slowly.

“I want you,” he said, “I need you. And he _tried to take you away_.”

"Sshh, now. It's okay," said John, "We're okay. I’m here."

Sherlock opened his eyes again, the pale winter blue of them melting from cold rage to softer sorrow, filled with regret. He turned to kiss John’s fingers, still resting on his cheek. "It was never meant to happen, let alone for you to see it."

"I know. Best laid plans of mice and consulting detectives, eh? Here." John helped Sherlock sit a little forward, then climbed in behind him, his legs bracketing Sherlock's hips. He guided Sherlock to lie back against his chest, wrapped both arms around him and kissed his head. "Is this better?"

"Much," sighed Sherlock, "Now sing something."

John laughed. "I don't know where this sudden urge to be serenaded comes from," he said, all warm affection.

"A dream," murmured Sherlock, drifting off, "Starlings are idiots."

Bemused, John kissed Sherlock's head again, against the soft fuzz of hair regrowing on the shaved spot. Prompted by the non sequitur, he began to sing.

 _Why do birds suddenly appear_  
Every time you are near?  
Just like me, they long to be  
Close to you.

“Mmm,” agreed Sherlock, already half asleep, “You.”

John held him for a long time. Listened to him breathe, fingers resting gently against his throat to feel the rhythm of his pulse. Watched and felt Sherlock’s chest rise and fall in his embrace.

He wanted to hurt the people who had hurt his Sherlock. He wanted to put those mad dogs down for fear they would try again, and succeed this time, in killing him. This man, this incredible man, for whom he had waited so long.

_Lifetimes. He had shed hundreds of lives to reach this one, to be ready for, and worthy of, this love of his._

The thoughts were hazy, and made no sense, but despite his protestations that he could not sleep, John was exhausted, having kept insomniac vigil for the days since Sherlock awoke. At last, with Sherlock at home, and in his arms (and a terrible patient, true, but that did not diminish one heartbeat of John’s love for him) John finally felt that his vigilance could abate.

He sang a little more… _Why do stars fall down from the sky?_ … but after a while, John, too, breathed even and deep, and retreated into sleep.

*

Richard stalked into the grove, his temper ill-tempered and out of patience with even this idyll. Khan leaned against a broad-trunked oak, watching the burbling rush of water as though it told him unhappy secrets. He was clad in the close-fitting black garb which he had worn when first he met his Duke of Gloucester.

He looked at Richard, and the frown barely lifted from his brow. “I do not know this uniform,” he said.

Richard plucked at his robes, finely woven and heavy with ornament. “I wore them,” he said darkly, “When I was King.”

Khan lifted an eyebrow, a comma to his thoughts, which paused before he found voice for them. “A very fine King,” he said, “This finery suits your nobility.”

“Do not mock me,” snarled Richard.

Khan tilted his head. “I do not mock, my love. You are a handsome king, though I see it sits uneasily upon you.”

“Why should I not wear my noble finery well?” growled Richard in defiance, though it was something other than pride that fired the confession, “I bartered my soul for my royal title. I killed kith and kin for it. I scythed a bloody road to my throne, and the very flower of my nation’s glory, my princely nephews, lay gory by my path where they were cut down. Aye, this finery makes me noble indeed.”

Khan regarded his raging love without judgement; and with canny understanding.

"You clearly have a purpose today. What is your will, then, Richard, my King?"

Richard’s mouth tilted in a savage smile that bode ill. "That the pestilent, poisonous, lack-blooded knaves, those cankerous, craven, mewling worms, that _dared_ to harm thee, that dared to even _dream_ such cursed villainy, be slaughtered by this good left hand, and aye, with this good right one too, if I can but devise a way. Nor shall their mortality be hewn from them forgiving-quick. Moriarty and his trained ape will cry to heaven for mercy, and pitiless heaven will grant it before Richard – who pitied not brothers, brides nor babes – will do any such thing."

Richard’s countenance was brutish fierce, bristling with malice as it once had been, when it terrified his English court and heralded cruel death for much leaner cause.

Khan was in no wise thus affrighted. This rage was not, after all, bent upon him.

"What wouldst thou, love, in this revenge?" he coaxed.

"To tear the flesh from their bones," growled Richard, "and hack off their limbs; to split their skins with my dagger and my very _teeth_ , and nail the bloody remnants to a cart to display their end as hideous warning to all the towns. _Thus perish any who dare to harm us_."

Richard's chest was heaving, sweat upon his brow, his back hunched and good arm clenched as though it held the dagger. His blue eyes, dark now with the storm in him, met Khan's as he added: "As was mine own… _butchered_ self thus displayed, once I had run, pell-mell, into the jaws of my doom."

Khan took a deep breath, his own eye glittering with a quiet, starless, black fury. "I would see them cut to atoms, and wield the blade myself,” he said. “I would make the cart you speak of from their very _bones_. They dared to threaten you. They dared to plot our separation, to take you from me, to make me forsworn, by forcing me to choose death and so leave you again, as I have sworn I will not. They dared much and I would make them pay in blood and screaming for it."

For a moment, the man of stars and the man of stone met eye to eye, of single mind and heart.

And then Khan blinked. "I will run hand in hand into the maw of hell with you, beloved. You know this for the truth."

"Aye," said Richard hoarsely, "Should we thus choose our course."

"Shall we?"

"Thus I once chose before, without you."

"Had I not left, or had I found a way to take you with me," said Khan, "Would you and I have chosen differently? The paths we carved for ourselves alone were sorry things. I should not have left you. Fate was not kind."

The burning rage left Richard suddenly, as though extinguished by a flood, the new torrent a different storm within him.

“To either of us. Malign not your self nor the stars for the fate that befell me, for I chose each step of mine own destiny. ‘Twas I alone that acted each line of my bloody drama, and became myself a Fate, that cruel befell those in my path. I was a wretched, cruel and unnatural king, my love – a spur-galled, full-gorged, venomous tyrant. I danced a roundel with murder, and thereafter did I become murder’s disdained mistress, and was slain like a dog. 'Twas no more, and perchance some measure better, than I deserved. Were I mine own executioner, I would have made it last a harvest moon, and count the bitter month a short-lived mercy to one who had been so cursed.”

Richard swallowed hard, his mouth twisted down in grief. He closed his eyes to hide it, but the sorrow and shame, so old, yet fresh still, spilled salt water from his lids and into his beard.

Khan, his rage deflated, reached towards him. “No, my love, you did not deserve to be so ill-used, whatever your sins.”

“My sins were many, and terrible.”

Khan did not try to convince him this was not so, for he knew too well that it was true. And that his own were greater yet, the blood he spilled being measured not in gallons but in _rivers,_ in great gushing _torrents_ of death.

“And I, my Prince,” whispered Khan, cupping his prince’s face in one hand, his long fingers caressing the bearded cheek with trembling strokes, “In my turn was inhuman; a vengeful and dishonourable warrior. Even before my three century’s sleep, I and mine chose a brutal path to peace. We would not abide to be slaves to those who made us for war and then feared what they had made and tried to kill us. In our survival, we became that which we despised. Despots, crushing any who displeased us, pretending we were seeking peace and security when all we sought was retribution. The man who woke me from that long sleep sought to enslave me thus again to treacherous purpose – and so I awoke to kill from spite as much as need.”

He continued, his voice bitter with self-recrimination. “And so treachery mounted upon treachery, and in the end I died a howling madman of hatred and despair, believing my family slain by Kirk, the enemy of my enemy, who, if I had attempted parley and honourable truce, may have spared them all. He had imagination enough to try, I think. Surely, I had then the power to make a choice that would have freed us, had I but attempted it.”

Now that he was at last telling this woeful tale, Khan could not stop.

“I never knew, while I lived, that my enemy had a kind of honour, and my family lived still. I thought them slain – but their true fate was little better. All I achieved was to return us prisoner to a sleeping death. Our enemies thought it merciful, but it was only a bloodless way to murder, for we were not alive. We were merely _not dead_. If we had chosen other paths – if _I_ had done so – perhaps we all would have been freed at last.”

Khan’s face crumpled. “And if my love for them was all, as I so claimed, I should have spent my life in exchange for theirs in such a hope, and not thrown it away for the bitter pleasure of hatred and revenge. I, like you, chose my fate. Though unlike you, I did not repent my cruelty by the smallest degree before I died.”

And now, at the end, Khan’s eyes closed as he confessed to his fate.

“I did not die in battle, but as a prisoner, and the dying was not quick. The cryogenic pod in which my body lay, condemned to sleep, malfunctioned. That is, my body slept, but my mind, Richard...” Khan’s voice began to break.

“My mind was conscious until the end, oh so very many decades later. By then I was truly mad with hatred, isolation and despair, believing my family slaughtered by my own treachery and the Federation’s cruel cunning. And believing this, I died alone, unmourned, raving in the darkness, a thing of loneliness and rage. At last the pod’s failures included life support, and I withered in my preserving coffin – though it had the benefit of ending my living agony. Thereafter, for they feared me still, my corpse was rendered less than dust and scattered to the furthest stars – having found no path or fortune but slavery or slaughter; having so utterly failed those whom I protested to love and swore to protect.”

Khan was weeping now, with the memory of his madness and his failures. He looked away, but Richard would not allow him to hide. He placed his own hand firm against Khan’s cheek and jaw, the edges of his smallest finger against the hollow of Khan’s throat.

“Do not fear I could love thee less,” Richard said, his own eyes furrowed with anguish for the anguish of his love, “Do not fear your shame will breed in me contempt. We, both of us, have transgressed far. And yet I love thee more deeply still for the fate thou made for thyself. My Khan, my love, my own angel. We have learned such hard lessons, and paid so dearly for our crimes. But do not look away. I love thee yet, and will until the Sun burns cold, and aye, for eons thereafter, for no Sun could love the Earth as much or for as long as I love thee.”

Khan’s next breath was a shaking gasp, and his pale eyes, filled with thankfulness, met Richard’s gold-flecked blue.

“In the early days and months when I was lucid, I would think of you,” he breathed, “Of _us_. Here in our glade. And it brought me comfort to remember. In later years when I was... less frequently lucid, this is where my mind would retreat. To you and the few days we had. The only place and the only person who asked nothing of me, nor took anything, but gave me trust and love. My fearless Richard.”

Khan took Richard’s withered hand and pressed it to his own his wet cheek. He kissed the fingers of it and held it to his lips in loving reverence. Richard threaded his other callused hand through Khan’s dark hair, rubbed his long, pale neck soothingly, and gently drew Khan down against his shoulder. 

Khan wept afresh against Richard’s neck, at being so comforted who in his other life never sought such comfort. His love held him tender-close and rocked him like a babe, as Richard himself was never comforted in that other life, except by this one man.

“Hush, love. Hush. I am here,” said Richard, warm and soothing against Khan’s ear, “We are together and your torment is at an end.” He rocked and held him, as Khan held Richard’s right hand to his cheek. Richard’s heart broke and swelled in equal measure, that he could offer his love this solace; that it was needed. “We will find a better path.”

In time, in time, Khan’s sorrow subsided and he found that he could smile crookedly for his Richard. “My hawk-like and gallant love. The lives I’ve lived, rediscovering my sanity so that I may find you again. And I found you, and you saved me. You brought me back to myself. I will not fail you, Richard. I will not so fail again.”

Richard’s brow creased, his sorrow writ on every line and hollow of his countenance. “Your destiny was for greatness, my lionhearted Khan. It can yet be.” 

“And now perhaps I will achieve it, with you beside me, with your own promised greatness at last to be fulfilled,” Khan said, his hands cupping his prince’s grief-dewed face, his thumbs stroking the line of his cheekbones, his own cheeks, too, salt-wet with anguish.  "We may between us win honour again, and be worth the name of champion." 

"Then I will slay him not, nor any other, except in thy immediate defence."

"Or your own, as will I, if need be. But we will find a third way."

"We will, love. _Oh_ , say that we will. I cannot bear to lose thee, nor yet to lose myself again in bloody madness."

"We will find another path," swore Khan, "By my love for you, and yours for me, I swear it." He stood clear of the oak, tall and mighty. He extended his hand to Richard.

Because this glade existed in a dream, the clothes Khan wore had changed to those Richard had once brought to him, in that early life. Or some of them, at least. Khan was barefoot now, and his tunic unfastened to drape over his black trews, revealing his blemishless body, lean and muscular.

Richard, whom this dream world now attired in his more accustomed tunic and trews, although he too stood with naked feet in the soft grass, took the hand and kissed it. He allowed Khan to draw him near, and to lean down, so that their lips met, gentle at first and then with hunger, and they kissed each other deep.

A fraction of their sudden hunger sated, Richard drew away a little, to slake the thirst of his eyes with his Khan's beauty, as Khan likewise gazed upon him. Richard traced the beloved lines of eyes and cheeks and mouth with the fingers of his left hand, then drew Khan down to press their foreheads close, and he laughed ruefully.

"What fools we be."

"Yet noble fools," replied Khan with a sighing laugh in echo, “Or so we aspire.”

"Aye, love. We will hold fast to our hope of redemption, as fast as we hold to each other."

"That is fast indeed, Richard, for we have held tight through time and many lives. Even my soul travelled back in time, as my body once did, to find you. And have we not forged this meeting place in the realm of dream with our devotion? We will not be defeated. Certainly not by such a dog as James Moriarty and his flea."

Richard rubbed his bristled cheek against Khan’s chest, and kissed the skin. “Should I lose thee…” he murmured, a creaking whisper.

“You'll not lose me,” Khan promised, his own voice rough as though saying it were enough to make it so, “We are bound together, my prince.”

Richard shook his head. “Do not call me Prince. It is a title undeserved and, like King, usurped and bought with innocent blood.” His eyes were anguished, his mouth pulled unhappily tight in the admission.

Khan held tight to Richard and pulled him close against his skin to offer comfort. “My lord, then.”

“Nor yet Lord, for you owe me no fealty. Let me be thy Richard, only. ‘Tis title enough for me.”

“My Richard you are, and ever will be.” Khan held him tighter still and bent to murmur in his Richard’s ear, “And yet you are still Prince of my heart.”

Richard huffed a little laugh, cheered by Khan’s tender humour. “Then let that be my only principality,” he said, “For I desire none other more.”

Khan took Richard’s withered hand and pressed it to his chest, over his heart. The claw-like curve that many in that past life found so ugly curled to fit perfectly over Khan’s sculpted muscle, and as Khan could feel the fingers move faintly against him, so Richard could feel the beating of his love’s heart – that cherished princedom.

“This four-chambered state is wholly yours,” declared Khan, “And all the lands around – from the borders of my skin and all within – all tenderness, thought, desire and courage I may summon, and blood and sinew too. It is all yours, my Richard.”

Tears fell again from Richard’s eyes, and he could not have told if they were from sorrow, repentance or hope, for they were all three. “As thou art Prince of my own poor realm – heart, hand and soul – made mighty only by your matchless grace, that you would set your palace therein.”

Khan smiled encouragingly past Richard’s melancholy and leaned to kiss his mate’s mouth, softly tasting tears. “Let it be thus, then, that we are one another’s prince, and we join our lands, borderless between each other. The double beat of our two hearts is our anthem and our call to arms.”

“Aye, oh aye,” breathed Richard.

They kissed again, tender-soft and then passion-rough, a scrape of teeth before the place was soothed with tongue and lips; then a nipping kiss, soft-kiss’d again before holding tight. Hair tugged playful-hard, then petted with careful strokes.

This is how they loved, rough and smooth, two warrior-lovers, who revelled in their bruising adoration of each other.

Breathing heavy, their soft, loving desire counterpointed by hard-jutting heat, they were soon naked, Richard with his legs clamped tight around Khan’s hips, Khan holding him up with his easy, uncanny strength. Richard’s fingers were twined in Khan’s hair; one of Khan’s arms held him tight across the back, the other firm under his buttocks, and in this unlikely pose, they rutted, joyfully wanton.

The oak tree was their upright bed, coarse bark against Khan’s back, as they kissed, sucked, bit, held tight (Richard’s right arm trapped firm between them, pressed to Khan’s skin, over his pounding heart) and they pushed hips hard together and cried out in their mutual pleasure.

After, Richard’s cheek against his Khan’s shoulder, he panted for breath. Instead of loving words, next he simply huffed happy laughter against the collar bone near his mouth.

“How stand you yet, my Khan? Truly, thy prowess is godlike.”

“I confess,” said Khan, likewise panting and laughing into the breath, “It’s mostly the tree that keeps us upright.”

“Set me down.”

“No. I will hold you a while longer yet.” He shifted his arms to hold Richard up. “And in a very short time, I will be ready to demonstrate my desire again, and you will be a well fucked Gloucester indeed.”

Richard bit Khan’s clavicle, hard, and Khan only laughed the louder. “Or you may penetrate my borders first, if you like. Go on, Richard. Send me your emissaries. I will accept them all, gladly, however hot salt sticky they are, and however often they seek me.”

Richard’s laugh become a ridiculous snickering giggle, and they held to each other a while longer, laughing, bodies shaking with the release of it, until at last Richard shifted from Khan’s grip and he stood upon the glade.

“Let us go to the river,” he said, “And bathe.”

Khan and Richard walked hand in hand to the river, and there beside the running water was the soap scented with cedar and honeysuckle. They bathed each other, now taking kind care of the bites and bruises that marked them for each other’s, and the river washed them clean.

*

With a small gasp, John awoke, but it was not nightmare but a dream of pleasure that had woken him. He pressed his cheek to Sherlock’s hair and tightened his embrace. Sherlock turned his head and nosed up into the hollow of John’s throat.

“Love,” he murmured.

“We’ll be all right,” John said softly, stroking Sherlock’s shoulders, arms, stomach, with soft and careful hands.

“Course we will,” said Sherlock, not quite as asleep now, “We are bound together.”

“Borderless,” John agreed.

“United,” said Sherlock, waking up enough to kiss John’s jaw, “He has no idea.” Sherlock nipped softly at John’s skin. John stretched his neck to let Sherlock nuzzle in closer, nip harder, and then he rubbed his cheek against the fall of dark curls; nudge the tip of Sherlock’s exposed ear with the tip of his nose. Kissed the spot.

“Moriarty will try again,” he said darkly, not knowing where the certainty came from.

“We’ll be ready,” promised Sherlock.

**Author's Note:**

> This last week has been very difficult. As always in times of trouble, I turn to writing to ease my way. This time, I wrote turmoil - but as always, I write towards the light.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Masters of Their Fates](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4454906) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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